SOUNDINGS 



His creed is a passport to an entirely different world. 



The religious sect which I visited in Florida, 

 which held that we live upon the inside of a hollow 

 sphere, treated our astronomy with scorn, yet 

 seemed to live sober, sane lives, and to do honest 

 work. But if they carried out the theory of the hol- 

 low sphere in practice, in their navigation, in their 

 clocks and sun-dials, or in anything else, how 

 quickly they would come to grief! 



Christianity is a workable hypothesis; it solves 

 the problem of life to vast numbers of persons; but 

 how irrational and puerile its philosophy, founded 

 upon the myth of the fall of Adam in the Garden of 

 Eden! Destroy this myth and you have cut off the 

 tap-root of Christianity. But do we not know, in the 

 light of evolution, that man's course has been up- 

 ward and not downward, that his "fall" was, in 

 fact, development into a higher state of being? 



Thinking men must find some sort of a solution 

 of the problems of the universe, and feeling men and 

 women must have some tangible, concrete thing 

 that in a measure satisfies their emotional natures. 

 The human heart cannot live on cold philosophical 

 abstractions. The ceremonies and observances and 

 rituals of the Church give one something he can 

 see and feel. For my own part I do not need this 

 sort of thing. Every day is a Sabbath day to me. 

 All pure water is holy water, and this earth is a 

 celestial abode. It has not entered into the mind of 



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